Friday, 19 September 2008
13:57

Island Aviation Services’ airline division, Maldivian, has procured a new Dash-8 50-seat plane for their services.

The new “Maldivian” airplane took off from Caines, Australia with four Maldivians onboard on 11 October and arrived in Maldives last Tuesday afternoon.

The Maldivians onboard the plane during the trip were the company’s pilots Captain Fathuhulla Jameel, Captain Mohamed Sunoosee Zahir and two engineers Ali Firaq and Abdul Haadhee Abdulla.The airplane was originally scheduled to arrive on 10 October but, according to Captain Fathuhulla Jameel, it had been delayed because Andaman airport had been closed due to bad weather.

According to the company, the new plane, purchased from Germany’s Aircraft Asset Management for US$110 million, is the only plane in their fleet that is emblazoned with the company’s rebranded “Maldivian” company name logo and art decal. The company also said that the plane had been taken to Australia for some repairs and to paint the company’s logo on it.

The Assistant Director Human Resources and Administration, Ismail Shujau, said that the new airplane’s scheduled flights would begin next week.“We have consulted with the engineers are ready to begin the flights next week,” he said. “Although we haven’t settled on a date yet the flights would commence sometime next week.”

Once the new plane comes into service, the number of daily flights to India will be increase to two flights and IAS has also decided to increase the number of daily flights to Sri Lanka.